


Love of mine, where did you go, and are you coming home?

by writersstareoutwindows



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, The Eleventh Hour, a small Eleventh Hour au because small Eleventh Hour fics seem to be my thing, do you ever think about how great that arc name is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 16:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11787000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writersstareoutwindows/pseuds/writersstareoutwindows
Summary: "This scene is not…it is memorable to you now, but in the moment, like, you weren't thinking, like, 'I'm going to remember everything about this moment' while it was happening. 'Cause that’s just the way that things go sometimes."what the red robe might have seen, if he had been in Refuge, in the mines, in the white space with them





	Love of mine, where did you go, and are you coming home?

They’re sitting at a table in the Davy Lamp, the three of them. The music is muted and dim, and they are not alone.

A girl sits across from them, old--but not quite as old. Sitting beside her is a man in a red robe. His hood is still up, but the three can tell he’s more human than he’s ever been.

“What the _hell,”_ he says, and it’s a man’s voice. He pushes away from the table, stumbles, and topples his chair. He’s not used to a human body.

Magnus shares tense looks with his friends, then turns those heavy eyes on the girl. “Are you working with the red robe?”

She’s looking at the red robe when she answers. “Nah. Did you think I didn’t see you?” This to the red robe. “I know Refuge pretty well by now. I notice everything that happens. I noticed you.”

The red robe pulls his hood lower over his face with both hands. “Don’t listen to her, boys. She’s gonna try to get you to use the cup.”

“Well, yeah.” She turns back to Magnus, Taako, and Merle. “This must be pretty confusing.”

“You’re Junebug,” Taako says.

“Yeah! Well. No. I’m the cup.”

“You’re the cup?” Magnus repeats. “Like, you’re the _relic?_ But you’re--you’re the girl.”

“Not...exactly _._ I _have_ June, I guess, which sounds more sinister than it is--”

“And you’re trying to claim you’re _not_ in league with the red robe over there?” Magnus flaps his hand between the two of them.

June waves the red robe over. “You can sit down, love. I’m not gonna make any of you do something you don’t wanna.”

The red robe lets go of his hood first. He appears to stare at Magnus, Taako, and Merle for several long seconds, but, draped in shapeless scarlet, he’s unreadable. Finally, he picks up the chair and sits.

June smiles reassuringly. “If anything, I’d say he’s in league with you three. He was helping you in all those loops. I don’t know if y’all noticed him, but I did. I just knew the four of you were determined enough to find me.”

“But the red robes made the relics,” Magnus says, spreading his arms across the table in his distress. “If he was helping us, it was so we would use...you.”

“Magnus, no, don’t--whatever she says, don’t use this relic. Come on--Merle, Taako, you gotta trust me.”

Merle, who’s sitting closest to the red robe, shifts to the other side of his chair. “Why do you know our names?”

At the same time, Taako says, “Trust you? You’re some fucking red robe ‘are you afraid of the dark’ harbinger type shit! We’re not going to trust you!”

“Yeah!” Merle says. “Really, we should do the opposite of whatever you tell us!”

Magnus says, “Well, no, we definitely shouldn’t use the cup…”

June watches the argument quietly, but finally says, “A’right, enough. It’s the _four_ of you who found me, so it’s the _four_ of you who are determined enough to use me for some actual good. I got power to change the past, but I don’t have the freedom to do it like I used to.”

“What happened to you?” Merle asks.

Magnus points at the red robe. “I’m guessing he did.”

The red robe puts his hands inside his hood. The muffled sigh sounds like it’s blowing between his fingers.

“It’s not my relic,” is all he says.

“Look,” June says, “this is where I’m hoping you can come in. With people like you, using me for good, I can actually have the power to--to reshape the past, to make the world better. I swear I’m not gonna control you or cast a thrall or anything. Just let me show you the good you can do. Isn’t that what you guys want? Just hear me out. That’s all I’m asking.”

The red robe leans over the table. “Whatever she shows you, don’t take it. I know you can stand up to her.”

Taako props his elbows on the table and leans toward the red robe. “What makes you think you know us?”

The red robe’s shoulders drop just slightly. His head swivels toward June, but there’s no help in her face. Another sigh emerges from the hood before he reaches up and throws it back.

Barry Bluejeans gives his friends a dismal smile before white light washes over them all.

 

 

June stands in white space, rewinding his memories. Barry watches them spin out backwards: loops in Refuge, an umbrella in the crystallized lab, poison hidden under a desk. They move faster and faster, in days, then weeks, then months. Ten years play out in reverse, countless cycles of hiding, raging, dying, searching, reviving, waiting. Over and over, until--

“Well, ain’t that interesting.”

The scene freezes. He and June are standing in a kitchen that he knows by instinct; what’s ten years’ absence compared to a century of meals and meetings and _home?_ A few objects rest on the table: a monocle, a stone, a belt. Magnus holds his cup in both hands.

“I call it the Time Cup!” he says proudly.

Lup’s eyes dart to Barry, twelve years ago, but she looks back before his giggle gives her away. Lucretia leans her Bulwark Staff against the table and touches Magnus’s arm gently.

“That’s probably not the best...Magnus, I’m sure we can find a more fitting name.”

“Come on, Lu! Taako made a fucking rock and you’re criticizing _my_ relic?”

“How about ‘the Temporal Chalice’?”

June is standing in front of Magnus. She holds her cup level with the one in his hands, then turns to Barry.

“Ain’t that _very_ interesting?”

Barry stares over her head. He hasn’t seen Lup in ten years, and on his worst days, he can’t remember what she looks like. The moment is frozen, but he wishes he could hear her voice, her laugh.

“You. You guys made me. Why don’t you wanna use me?”

Barry blinks and looks at June. “It’s not worth the risk. Not when we’re so close to fixing...this.”

“Y’all made me! You pulled me apart and stuffed me into trinkets and you won’t even use the power you left me with! You could fix all _this_ right now.”

The memories rush around her like a crashing wave. Colorful, clear, abundant, in red and silver and black, they move so quickly that June’s hair flies around her head. Barry feels buffeted by the force of a hundred years.

“This is where all your friends’ missing time went. You got it right here.” Her eyes glow. “Why’s that, Barry? Why’d you run from your family?”

Barry knows she already has the answers because they’re blurring around her. She’s seen Lucretia and Fisher, she’s seen sunsets on a beach, a sapphire under a dead city, glowing mushrooms, ink pillars, opal, apocalypse. She’s firing at his weak points because that’s what the relics do. He knows everything he sees is a part of the chalice’s thrall--a desire to be desired that, in ten friendless years, he’s come to understand.

Yet, bracing himself against the force of recollection, guilt still goes off in his heart like fire. Guilt, and a longing for home.

At his silence, June’s hands tighten around the cup. The scene around them jerks to a stop so suddenly that Barry feels dizzy. He blinks and holds his head until it stops spinning, and when it does, he sees his mother.

Her soft grey hair is caught in a stormy breeze. The crowd surrounding her is frozen in the middle of cheers and applause. Her wide smile reflects their excitement, and her bright eyes shimmer with pride.

All against a black backdrop threaded with blues and greens.

Barry’s heart hits his ribs. June’s eyes sweep the scene with detached interest, but they linger on Barry’s face for a second too long. He feels tears caught in his throat as he looks at his mom on the day he left home.

“You’re running out of family to lose,” June says, quickly and quietly.

Time drops. One hundred years flit past so quickly that Barry closes his eyes, feeling sick. He knows she wants to disorient him and it’s working anyway.

When June’s gentle nudge prompts him to open his eyes, he sees himself leaning beside the kitchen door on the Starblaster.

He hears the Thong Song blasting inside, accompanied by Taako’s loud movements and embellishments. He hears himself laugh softly. He’d wanted to talk to Lup, to try and cheer her up, but it seemed like Taako had it well to hand. Hearing her roar with laughter, he hadn’t wanted to interrupt.

That Barry shuffles a few notes out of his pocket, crouches on the floor, and reads over them. He’s working through a mental equation when Lup nearly trips over him.

“What are you doing on the floor, you nerd?” She grabs his hand in both of hers and swings him to his feet. When his notes go flying, she catches those too.

He stumbles, laughs. “I was waiting to talk to you, but I guess I got a little focused. Just to say, y’know, good night before I turn in.”

“Barry, we sleep in the same bed.”

The Barry who is watching feels his knees go to jelly. That voice, her voice. Always at the edge of a laugh. Tight with stress now--then--but still firelight. Still familiar.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but you know how heavy I sleep. If I go to bed first, I won’t see you ‘til tomorrow morning, and that’s too long to wait.”

Lup laughs with her entire face, and then Barry’s surrounded by her. “You’re a big fucking nerd, you know that?”

He holds on to the hug, and there’s the smell of smoke and cinnamon--on her clothes, in her hair. He feels the smile pressed against his forehead.

“Yeah, I know.”

They step back but grab each other’s hands. Seeing each other’s cheesy grins, they both giggle.

“G’night, nerd of mine,” Lup says.

Barry lifts his hand to her cheek, her fingers still cupping his. He strokes her hair back with his thumb.

“You need anything?” he says. He can imagine her pupils are circles of glass; he knows she’s still thinking about it.

Her smile doesn’t falter. “I’m gonna be all right.”

“Okay. Okay.” She crouches so that he can kiss her. “I’m heading to bed. See you in the morning, love of mine.”

He makes it halfway down the hall before time stops.

“That was the last thing you ever said to Lup.”

June steps back into the scene. If she sees the tears on Barry’s face, she doesn’t react.

“You felt her lie down next to you a few hours later, but when you woke up, her side of the bed was cold. She took her umbrella and didn’t leave anything but a note. You remember what it said?”

Barry closes his eyes. Her handwriting is on the back of his eyelids. _“Back soon.”_

“But no matter how long you waited, it wasn’t true. No matter how hard you searched. She was just gone.”

_Taako, what if…?_

“Stop it.” He’s got one hand over his face, the other pushed out to keep June away.

“This is why Magnus _made_ me! Ain’t it? To protect people. To stop the bad thing from ever happening. Think of all the stuff you know now. You could do it all _right_ this time.”

“Magnus made you because we didn’t have a different choice.” Barry stops there. Talking to a relic is pointless and harmful. That was the choice--to want and never use, and oh, _he wants to._

“The cup,” he says instead. “He made the cup.”

Glaring into the cup, June looks about ten years old. She says, in a warble, “Why didn’t she tell you where she was goin’?”

He looks at Lup grinning at the back of his head.

“Why’d you let Lucretia do that?”

Lup had already made up her mind.

“Why’d you abandon Taako right then? You know his kid memories are all staticky where his sister’s supposed to be?”

“I know!”

It roars from him. He feels snapped in half, his focus fractured. His thoughts run in a million directions like red lightning. He has to concentrate them, come back to that anchoring goal.

“I’ve been trying to fix it since I hit the ground. But you can’t fix anything. You--the relics--only make things worse.”

“Then what’s the point! What’s the damn point of me if you’re never gonna use us?”

“It only makes things worse.”

He takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes. Now he remembers what being dead feels like: ice water for blood, ice cubes for teeth. It helps him focus, reminds him what he is and why he has to control his electric thoughts.

It also makes him shiver.

“We made everything worse.”

June laughs. “Ain’t that the damn truth of it. You lot _shattered_ a power you never understood. Maybe I coulda helped you before, but now I’m never gonna be strong enough to do anything if you can’t do it for yourself first.”

Her fingers clutch the brim of cup as she pushes it at him.

“So please, _lord,_ fix this. Talk to Lucretia and none of this ever happens. Those three boys’ll remember you. They won’t even remember they forgot you. Lup comes home--Lup never _leaves._ You talk to her, right now, and she never leaves. Barry, you can bring your family home.”

 

 

Barry wakes up alone. He rolls onto Lup’s side of the bed, looking for her warmth, but it’s cold.

He sits up, reaches for his glasses, and flicks on a lamp. The bedroom door is still open, but the hall light is off. Pale sunlight begins to color the room as Barry rolls out of bed. The floor is cold, so he puts on Lup’s slippers and shuffles into the quiet hall.

Sometimes Lup wakes up before him, and he finds her sitting outside against the railing, holding a cup of coffee. Color lights her up from below, and the steam and morning light make her look soft and distant as her eyes follow the horizon. His heart hits his ribs every time.

But instead of coffee, the kitchen smells like last night’s burnt party food. The deck outside is empty and grey. Barry walks quickly-- _not running,_ he tells himself--to the door and sticks his head out. The morning air is cool and misty and she’s definitely not there.

He closes the door quickly-- _not slamming,_ he tells himself--and takes a deep breath. She probably got up early and went to Taako’s room to work on something. She never did give his notes back last night, and she likes working at Taako’s desk because it’s neater; his things are scattered around every room but his own.

If she’s fallen asleep at his desk, it wouldn't be the first time. And she’ll really need something to drink when she wakes up. Barry moves around the kitchen, opening cabinets and taking things out without thinking about the routine. His small sounds are the only noise on the ship.

He doesn’t notice the note until he sets her favorite mug on the kitchen table.

His heart hits his ribs.

A decade later, a young girl falls to the ground. A cup rolls out of her hands, bounces heavily off the platform, and lands at his feet.

**Author's Note:**

> The quote in the summary is from episode 48, during Magnus's scene with the chalice.  
> tazscripts.tumblr.com is a wonderful thing.
> 
> The "Time Cup" exchange was inspired by [this post.](https://phenomenal-eggplant.tumblr.com/post/162724996641/fact)
> 
> All my titles really are sentences, which I guess should just be my thing because I like it. I tried to write a poem between Stolen Century and Story and Song about Lup and exits and all that, but that title is the only line I came up with.


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